We’d hazard a guess that ASUS is better known for its laptops, motherboards, and graphics cards, but the company’s routers are both high quality and affordable—speaking from personal experience over the better part of two decades. The current rollout of Wi-Fi 7 naturally gives rise to new gear, like the ASUS TUF Gaming BE9400, the latest entry into ASUS’ network offerings.
The TUF BE9400 has full Wi-Fi 7 support, including 320 MHz channels, QAM-4096, and MLO (Multi-Link Operation), a feature that lets the router use multiple frequencies simultaneously. This should let it offer lower latency compared to Wi-Fi 6, a boon for gaming over the airwaves and for improved page loading speeds. The peak bandwidth available is a whopping 5764 Mbps for the 6 GHz band, 2882 Mbps for 5 GHz, and 688 Mbps for the OG 2.4 GHz frequency.
This router seems to be aimed at power users and even homelab gurus. There are multiple SSIDs available for IoT devices, children, and MLO networks. There’s also VPN support for up to 30 clients, with multiple protocols available including WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IPSec. As with any self-respecting homelab router, there’s easy port forwarding on tap with only three clicks. The four Ethernet ports at the back (one WAN, three LAN) are all of the 2.5 Gbps variety.
Additional networking features include using the onboard USB port for cellular tethering, adaptive QoS filtering, native support for Let’s Encrypt, and DNS-over-TLS. As usual with the ASUS’ routers, the TUF BE9400 includes AiMesh functionality to easily work in tandem with other units with said feature. The Taiwanese giant says the six antennas should be good enough to wash radio signals over an area of 2500 square feet. Internally, the router is powered by a 1.5 GHz quad-core CPU with 1 GB of RAM.
ASUS had no word about U.S. availability or pricing, but we did some digging of our own and saw the router available for pre-order at some international websites, meaning it should cross the sea soon. The Singaporean site Hardware Zone claims the TUF BE9400 should cost around 329 Singaporean dollars (SGD), or about $256 U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, Australian outlet PBTech lists a $440 AUD price, or $287 USD. Given the current BE6500 is going for $259.99 at the ASUS store, we reckon the $287 figure looks reasonable enough.
